WASHINGTON, THE EVERGREEN STATE
reservations come to town to take part in a
fair. The hills that once were the haunts
of wild animals are crowned with parks
and dignified homes surrounded by shady
lawns and flower gardens. In 1889 fire
destroyed 32 blocks in the business district,
and the energetic citizens replaced ram
shackle frame buildings with handsome
structures of brick and stone. No trace
remains of the frontier town in this metro
politan capital of the Inland Empire (see
page 177).
Spokane is in the center of a great play
ground. Within 50 miles of it are 56 lakes.
The citizen who emulates Izaak Walton
can fish in a different lake every week-end
of the year and have some likely angler's
Edens left for holidays; or, if he prefers
fishing in running water, he can flick a
fly in any one of a hundred trout streams.
NATURE'S SPLENDOR IN THE HEART
OE A CITY
The turbulent Spokane River flows
through the heart of the city, in time of
flood flinging the spray of its lovely falls
high over the rail of the Monroe Street
Bridge, 135 feet above its rapids. In the
very atmosphere there is something alive
and vital.
Power of the mountain torrents has
made the city a manufacturing center, but
with all its industry it is a home town, the
very prototype of solid America and the
warm-handed West. Its hominess and
friendliness are evident to the visitor the
moment he steps into the hotel about
which social life centers.
In the irrigated Spokane Valley, fruit,
vegetables, and flowers run riot in teeming
fields. Near the city limits are many lum
ber and paper mills, a large match factory,
and Felts Aviation Field, from which the
Spokane Sun God made its record nonstop
refueling flight to the Atlantic seaboard
and back in August, 1929.
Spokane has within its corporate limits
one of the most attractive park systems in
the country; but, not satisfied with that,
it has acquired a mountain, a rugged giant
which towers above pine-clad hills, a few
hours' drive to the north (see page 196).
"Baldy," as the peak is called by the old
timers, was presented to the city by some
of its leaders and promptly rechristened
Mount Spokane, no rival town demurring.
The mountain is one of the finest show
places in Washington, affording a view on
a clear day of 14 forest lakes and rivers.
From Mount Spokane it is an interest
ing drive to Long Lake Dam, source of the
power that turns the wheels of the city's
industry, one of the highest spillway dams
in the world. A few miles below is the
smaller Little Falls Dam. Either project
in the East would create a manufacturing
giant.
WASHINGTON HAS POWER TO WASTE
There were 71 hydroelectric power proj
ects in operation in Washington in 1931,
and by January I, 1932, all the plants to
gether had a capacity of more than I,ooo,
ooo horsepower. The State has more than
a sixth of the total potential water power
in the United States.
At Metaline Falls, a district tributary
to Spokane, rich zinc and lead mines have
been opened recently. In developing one
mine the engineers have sunk a 325-foot
shaft into a mountain side and have taken
out a block of zinc ore 99 feet thick over a
surface area of more than an acre, without
reaching either the bottom or the top of
the deposit or yet its limit in any direction.
The mines are located in wild and
rugged country, on the Pend Oreille River,
a region that compares in beauty with that
around Lake Chelan.
Cheney, 26 miles southwest of Spokane,
gave Spokane Falls a great battle in the
early days for the honor of being capital
town of Spokane County. In the spirited
contest there was gun play, and court rec
ords were taken from Spokane Falls by
armed men and carried off to Cheney. It
was not until 1887 that Spokane won un
disputed right to the county seat. Cheney
had to be content with a State Normal
School, which to-day has an enrollment
greater than the total population of the
two towns in the days of the county-seat
fight.
A 50-MILE CHASM I,000 FEET DEEP
Of particular interest to Spokane and
the Inland Empire, as indeed to the whole
Northwest, is the Columbia Basin, in the
channeled scablands southwest of Spo
kane. It is the proposed site of an irriga
tion project that will reclaim 1,883,ooo
acres of rich desert land for agriculture.
The area centers about the Grand Coulee,
a 50-mile chasm, I,ooo feet deep, cut